


A Fine Gift Indeed

by Kaelynisfree



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-17
Updated: 2017-04-17
Packaged: 2018-10-20 01:43:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10652364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kaelynisfree/pseuds/Kaelynisfree
Summary: Warden Solona Amell has difficulties learning to shapeshiftYears later, after Warden Amell parishes during the battle of Denerim, Morrigan wonders.





	A Fine Gift Indeed

Shapeshifting was evil. Akin to demon summoning and blood magic. The Circle had taught her that and the Circle was all Solona had known. So to her, Shapeshifting was dangerous and unpredictable. A magic for apostates and malificar. And Solona knew she would never be an apostate or a malificar. 

However, a few months into her journey as a Grey Warden, she found herself wondering what it would be like. She watched Morrigan change from creature to creature, saw what freedom it instilled and wondered what it might feel like. From a mechanical perspective, Solona felt the veil change and pull in the ordinary way that it did when she cast mundane spells ,but could not figure out how Morrigan was effecting the veil to get that result.  

Asking Morrigan to teach how shapeshifting worked was a difficult task on its own. Morrigan was as reluctant to teach her as Solona was reluctant to ask to be taught, but there the two mages were; the girl who grew up in a circle and the apostate daughter of the witch of the wilds. They bickered like children at first. Magic on an intellectual level was very different than how it felt on an instinctual level. 

Solona sits on a rock, holding her staff out as if it's some sort of arm rest. She is exhausted, and understandably so. She's been outside with Morrigan for at least 4 hours. “How can I pull magic from the fade to change my form. Where does the rest of me go?”

“How should I know?” Morrigan replies, as if it were, in fact, a dumb question. _That_ makes Solona's blood boil. Her expression stays neutral, but she so desperately wants to open her eyes.  “The magic is the same magic you use to make fire out of cool air. Instead of changing the air, you change yourself. It’s not difficult.”

Solona takes a deep calming breath. grasping her staff tighter. She wants to learn, but Morrigan is so laizzez faire about it as if she hadn't been spending her whole life practicing. “Changing myself is very different than changing the air. I am alive. The air is not, Morrigan.”

"That is no matter, Warden. Try again."

She pulls on the fade again, first, thinking about how the air heats and changes, then wills the heat to spring into her hand. Fire pours from her palm. 

Morrigan nods in approval. “Do that. But make yourself a bird. Birds are simple.”

Solona frowns. She can do this. She closes her eyes, squeezing them tightly. All she has to do is take that same energy she used to make the fire and… She groans loudly.

“How is it the same thing to create fire and to become a bird?”

Morrigan rolls her eyes, leaning against her own staff, basically just a weathered branch compared to the circle whittled one Solona carried. “It just is.”

Solona can’t take it anymore. She clenches her fist, the small ball of fire dissipating into smoke. “Maker,” she curses. “If I don’t understand how it works, how am I supposed to complete the spell?” 

“Pfft. Circles _are_ useless,” Morrigan replies with a laugh, a knowing grin. “It doesn’t matter if you don’t understand how it works or why. Only that if you will it, it will happen.”

Solona takes another deep breath. No use getting angry. But as much as she’s tried to stay unaffected by Morrigan comments, Solona finds it hard to stay neutral. 

Morrigan takes a step towards the Warden. “Now. Will it.”

“Alright. Fine. I will _will_ it. Because that’s how magic works.”

It really is, but Solona isn’t going to mention that now. Instead, she stands, striking a casting pose, and again begins to pull at the fade. It would be so easy to make fire or ice. But no. That is not what she needs. She needs a bird.

She lets the fade’s energy flow around her hand and then wonders what might happen if she brought the fade around herself, as if she were trying to heal. Maybe this would help. She pulls and breathes it in, magic soaking her bones and settling into her core. She would become a raven.

Small and feathered, light, bones hallow. She would be a bird. 

It’s almost constricting, the way the magic tightens and crushes. That isn’t how it normally worked, but she looked up at Morrigan who watches, intrigued. 

It’s taking to long. If she’d gotten it, it would worked by now. She opens her mouth to tell Morrigan it isn’t working. She tries to force air from her lungs in a familiar way, but the sensation of it is so completely unfamiliar, she isn't sure what to do with it at first. She opens her mouth to try again, except, it's not a mouth. It's a beak.

 _Beak._ She flaps her wings and feels the rustle of her feathers. _Her wings_ and _her feathers._

She caws. If only birds could smile. 

Morrigan laughs heartily, more laughter than Solona has ever seen from her companion. She caws again and jumps on two unfamiliar feet. They dig in to the dirt more than her human feet ever had. 

She jumps and flaps her wings; perhaps she can fly into Morrigan’s face. 

But movement is more complicated than she released. She jumps and flaps, but immediately sinks to the ground with a thud, which causes Morrigan to laugh even more. Steeling her resolve, she stands again. Just as she became a bird, she would fly. 

Again, she leaps into the air, this time opening her wings completely as she flaps. The air under her wings ruffles her feathers and feels strange, but Solona is nothing if not determined. 

She flaps her wigs a few more times before she is high enough in the air to soar, Morrigan getting smaller the higher she gets. She can see the camp; Zevran chatting with Oghren, Wynne teaching Alistair how to patch his own socks, Leliana quietly plucking away at an instrument. They all have their own way of passing the time between battles. They've had theirs ways to survive.

She lets herself soar a little longer before landing softly in a tree. Maybe this could be hers. She knows it would be better to have something other than the blight on her mind. 

——-

Morrigan keeps this new trick of Solona’s a secret. The Warden did not need the condescending lectures from the old woman, or the unrelenting questions from Alistair. 

“Thank you for not saying anything ,” Solona says to Morrigan at the Arl’s estate in Denerim. 

"About what?" Morrigan asks as they sit in the library. 

Solona looks around, to make sure no-one else is there. Oddly enough, Sten could often be found in the Library, staring out window, lurking. "The Shapeshifting. Thank you for not telling anyone that I've done it."

Morrigan shrugs off Solona’s thanks like an old coat in summer. It’s unnecessary and unwieldy to her. “It was not my secret to share, my dear Warden."

“Still. Thank you,” Solona continues, placing a gilded hand mirror into Morrigan’s hands. “You gave me a gift, better than any I could have ever given to you. I will treasure it always.” 

Morrigan takes it with a simple nod and looks into it's polished surface with a smile.

—–

Before the battle can end, Morrigan is halfway across Ferelden. She thought it would be easier that way. Traveling was difficult. She'd always had someone, even if that someone was just her mother, and now she was alone. Probably her own fault.

Some days, it was easier to forget out the Warden and the blight. Of course, some days, it was impossible.

“The Hero of Ferelden didn’t die, you know!” she heard a patron of a tavern say, a few weeks into her travels. 

“They never did recover her body!”

“What do you mean by that, young man?” Morrigan asks from her table at the far corner of the taver, her curiosity getting the better of her.

'Well, you know how she did that whole killin' the archdemon where she stabbed it and saved everyone but died in the died after dealing the killin' blow?"

Morrigan nodded. "I've heard.

“Well, some say that she didn't die! She really turned into a bird at the end there and flew away!” 

Morrigan cannot help but laugh.

“It’s true!” he says, taking offense at her laughter. “I ‘eard she slew the Archdemon, and just collapsed. Everyone thought she was dead! And before the Warden Commander to get to her body, he saw’r one of them big black birds flyin’ away. He swore it!”

“A raven?” She asks.

“Yeah! One of them ravens!” 

Morrigan isn’t sure whether to be impressed or just happy. Perhaps Solona is still alive, perhaps not. It’s not as easy to find truth in reality as it is in the fade. 

—–

Morrigan travels for a long time, but eventually she finds reason to settle. Truth be damned, there were more mysteries to life than the fate of a single mage. She sometimes thinks on the Warden, but doesn't question her fate until one day Morrigan finds herself wandering into the Aviary at Skyhold, Leliana within, tending to the birds. 

Leliana, a expert on mystery herself, stands at the top tower, sun shining in from the window, casting more shadow instead of illuminating. 

Perched on the Spymaster's arm, a large black bird sits. It chirs when Morrigan approaches.

“Is that a raven?” Morrigan asks, the bird eating from Leliana's other hand. 

“Yes, she is,” Leliana replies as the bird hops up to settle on the Spymaster’s shoulders. 

“She seems quite taken with you, Leliana.” It's curious. There aren’t many ravens out this far into the mountains. 

The bird coos and flaps her wings gently, a small nuzzle into Leliana’s hood. “I consider her a friend, Morrigan. I’ve had this bird for many years. She’s followed me throughout these troublesome years.”

“Right after the blight then?”

“It must have been a few months afterwards, I suppose.” Leliana chuckles softly. She feeds another grain to the raven who cocks her head towards Morrigan and caws louder. “She is one of my best messengers. She’s never been caught.”

Morrigan tilts her head at the bird, and the bird tilts her head back. They star at each other for moment. “Are you now?”

The bird crows again. She could swear the bird’s eyes light up before she takes off out a widow. 

Leliana doesn’t jump. “Is there something you need, Morrigan?”

She shakes her head. “No… I…” she watches the window and frowns. “I was only looking around. Wandering."

Morrigan moves to leave, but stops. "Leliana..."

"Yes, Morrigan?"

She tries to from a question in her head, but it's almost too silly to even ask.

_Yes, sorry, but did you even her the rumor that our Warden faked her death by turning into a bird and flying away after slaying the archdemon and riding Ferelden of the blight?_

It was a preposterous idea, most likely started by Alistair himself to help relieve his grief. 

"Nevermind. It's nothing..."

Of course, it's not nothing and Morrigan thinks about it for several days. She even goes back to the Aviary to the find that Raven. 

It is nearing dusk when she finds her way to where the birds are kept. At first, she doesn't see her, but a dark bird flies in and Morrigan could swear that she stops midflight when she sees her. 

They stare at each other for another moment and Morrigan wills this bird's eyes to be the same eyes as her friend. She reaches a hand out to cup the bird's face, slowly.

But before her hand can make contact there is an interruption. Someone is there to clean the coup. Morrigan jumps and rushes out, embarrassed. That bird was not her Warden. It almost felt like she was finally grieving for her.

\----

The next day, just after dawn, a loud crowing followed by the sounds of clanging wakes her. Next to her, Kieron stirs.

“Go back to sleep, child,” she bids before opening the door of her cottage. She scans the horizon, but there is nothing.

She is about to close it again when she see's a glint from the rising sun, shining off something below her. 

She looks down at her feet, and cannot help but laugh. A large pile of jewelry; necklaces and rings and bracelets and bells, glittering and sparkling in the morning sunlight. A small compact mirror. All on her doorstep. 

She looks out to the horizon with a squint. Is that a raven she see’s in the distance? 

She laughs again. No. That would be preposterous, wouldn’t it?


End file.
